Disappointed by Obama's sizeable travel entourage

Published 4:48 pm, Thursday, July 15, 2010

These are hard times. A lot of people have lost their jobs and are now trying to make both ends meet with what they get from their unemployment benefits.

I feel offended when I read about the large entourage that President Obama brought with him when he attended the G-20 summit in London.

According to Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service: "Obama arrived with 500 staff in tow, including 200 Secret Service agents, a team of six doctors, the White House chef and kitchen staff with the president's own food and water. He also came with 35 vehicles in all, four speech writers and 12 teleprompters."

In addition to Air Force One, he had the presidential helicopter, Marine One, the presidential limousine, Cadillac One, and a fleet of decoys to ferry him from Stamsted Airport to central London.

The Guardian described the limo as the ultimate in heavily armored transport, reinforced with ceramic and titanium armor, carrier tear gas cannon, night-vision devices and its own oxygen.

We pay our taxes, we tighten our belts because of the recession and high prices, but our president seems out of touch with reality, with the federal deficit, with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq draining our resources. If he continues to travel in this grand style, our country will soon go bankrupt.

I sometimes wonder if we have elected a king, the way Obama conducts himself, the way he feels entitled to the pomp and circumstance of the presidency. Though Caroline Kennedy thinks so, he is no JFK. He has got things backward: He thinks that to whom much is given, much is forgiven, and to ask what the country can do for him, not the other way around.

Obama has not been entirely transparent on many issues, the most basic of which is the authenticity of his birth certificate. So far, the only transparent thing about him is his teleprompter.